Ctrl-A is fine. Annoyingly the script interface doesn't have access to the collection of tracks listed on the screen after you used Display Exact Duplicates, or typed something in the search box. You might see 2, 20 or 200 tracks, but the script sees the entire playlist unless you select what it displayed.

There are three main classes of duplicates, logical, physical, and different sized. Yes deletes all three, no (safer) deletes just the first two. Since largest files are preserved you're unlikely to have lost out.

And no, it should not delete all the selected songs. No need for a script to do that. It should leave you with one copy of each unique track.

That's good to hear ! I restored all of the MP3 from the Recyle Bin and re-ran the script. Not sure if it's running though.... and it's been going for a while (at least an hour or more). I am past the 2nd dialog though and I did pick the "No" option, i.e. the one described as "safer".

I saw you mention that iTunes will update it's database quite frequently when making changes and this will slow it down. It's dealing with 8gb of duplicate files.

"I went ahead and debugged the problem. It turns out there were '/' characters in some of the names pulled from playlists, because they were done on a Linux system. That's what was confusing things. I'd suggest a global replace of '/' with '\' before Set objFolder=objShell.Namespace(strFolderParent) to avoid that problem." ======== "Great, thanks for that. I'll post a revision up later. I'm on my iPad rather than at a PC just now..." ======== I've just ran into the same or similar issue. The exact details are: Windows Script Host ----------------------- Script: C:\Users\Amy\Deduper.vbs Line: 309 Char: 7 Error: Object required: 'T' Code: 800A01A8 Source: Microsoft VBScript runtime error I downloaded the script just a week or two ago. Is it encountering something different than what you guys discovered back then ?

I chose "yes" at first dialog and "no" at second. I also tried "yes" at second on a subsequent run with same resulting error.

I wasn't doing anything with library - I let it run in the background while I browse the internet, etc, etc.

Off-topic: I noticed many, if not most, of the duplicates are the original album's version and also from a "greatest hits" album. Yeah, they're likely identical, but since they're from different albums, how could you get iTunes to deal with this better ?

You should be holding down shift, selecting File > Display Exact Duplicates and then selecting the results before running the script. Original Album and Greatest Hits versions of the same song in these circumstances shouldn't be displayed, unless you have multiple copies of the tracks from both albums.

Still scratching my head on this one. I'll have to think about about adding some debugging code to reveal more...

It would be interesting to see the details for two obviously different copies that are being displayed. I've not had that problem before.

I may not have time to rifle through the code this evening but it might help to answer No to the first prompt in order to set up track-by-track confirmation. That way you might get the detail of which track is causing a problem.

I apologize (and feel silly now). I must not have done the Shift option. Just did it again and get (204) duplicates. Will re-run your script now...

Okay, I still get the error by answering Yes, then No.

I still get the error by answering Yes, then Yes.

Now for the one-by-one attempt. By the way, it went from (204), to (202), and now is at (200), so it seems to be processing a couple each time before it hits something it doesn't like...

It prompted me to delete a song and when I clicked Yes, it popped up the error again. I know what song it is, of course. By the way, what order does it go in ? The song is # 59 and # 60 from the Display Duplicates listing.

It processes tracks in reverse order. If there are 10 tracks selected and it deleted track 1, say, all the other tracks would shift down by one and the script would lose it's place... If the tracks are listed in an order which puts the duplicates next to each other it will delete one or the other depending upon which is newer or smaller but will typically be deleting alternate tracks.

Hmm, are you running the script on the main Music playlist? If it is a manual playlist you could have dragged the same songs into it more than once, but deleting one instance would cause the same sort of problems as above.

This leads me to two ideas that I've been mulling over but I should really find the time to complete. First a script to eliminate repeat entries in a playlist for the same object. Second a reworking of my scripts so that the first job they to is make their own internal deduped list of objects which they then work with to prevent this kind of problem...

I just read this entire thread and am amazed with your dedication to helping strangers fix this problem. Sincere thanks!

Now I apologize if this is a stupid question, or if it has already been answered, but how exactly do you run the DeDuper script? I downloaded it and tried to open it with iTunes (already having switched to displaying exact duplicates and highlighting all the songs) but I didn't see anything happen. In another post you mentioned that a progress bar may show up, though I didn't get one.

Am I attempting to run the script properly? The method I used felt a bit too simple. While I never got an "iTunes can't open this file" type message, I also haven't seen anything happening.

The general method of use is to download the script to a folder of your choice, e.g. your Desktop, Downloads folder or create a folder at ...\iTunes\Scripts. Select a playlist or highlight some tracks in iTunes and then double-click on the script to execute it. If no specific tracks are selected the script will try to work with all tracks in the current playlist. Some scripts offer a choice of track by track confirmation of changes or fully automatic processing of the selection. Many of the scripts can optionally display a progress bar while running.

You are strongly advised to backup your entire library, or at the very least the iTunes Library.itl file, before use. Test the behaviour of your chosen script on a small group of files first to make sure it does what you want before applying it to large numbers of files.

In short, you run the script from Windows Explorer by double-clicking on it. If nothing happens at all then there is a possibility your AV package is silently blocking access, though usually they like to brag.

Thanks for your quick reply! That is what I initially attempted, but windows didn't know how to open the file. It gave me the "search the web for appropriate program" or "browse" options, so I decided to try to open it with iTunes. I think I guessed wrong. What should I have done when that window popped up?

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